


if you remembered our days by the sea

by pondscumms



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, F/M, bday fic woo woo wooooo, postgame, yall ive been trying to write fluff for agez but this is just Not a Happy Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 05:50:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20237797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pondscumms/pseuds/pondscumms
Summary: If understanding Ouma Kokichi is a game, Shirogane is a cheater.Ouma struggles with what it feels like to be loved.





	if you remembered our days by the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mediocre_kazoo_player](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocre_kazoo_player/gifts).

> @kaz happy 20th u oooooold man!!!!!! i wrote ur favorite garbage ship for u, smelly
> 
> hinted to take place after the end of [opus no. 53](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15929120) , but no context is necessary ! i rlly wanted to play with the idea of tsum (roughly) understanding the elusive goblin ouma-kun in 2 seconds as opposed to anyone else who needs to enter slow burn hell to evn begin to comprehend what is going on in his rat brain..basard

A quiet street in a quiet town. An empty street in an empty town, all its little houses and shoppes dim and vacant despite the soft glow of the sun in the middle of the sky like the yolk of a big fried egg.  
  
On that quiet street, a quiet convenience store, its automatic sliding doors painted a dollhouse white, squares of sunlight soaking in through the frosted glass and illuminating rows upon rows of chewing gum and chocolate placed right in front of the cashier to tempt customers into making a last minute purchase. Sitting behind the cashier's counter, a young woman with long hair the color of faded fabric once dyed with cornflowers. Standing behind seven different flavors of Lindt chocolate balls, a young man so pale his skin glares in the sun.  
  
The young man laughs. He sounds tired. His shoe scuffs the ground, rubbing against the ridges of a blue linoleum tile. "So heaven looks like a seven-eleven, huh? Color me disappointed." He pauses, his lips settling into a still smile directed at a point just beyond the cash register, falling short of the lady at the counter. "Although...I guess a guy like me would get sent straight to hell for all the misdeeds I've committed in my evil life. Sooooo, the lords of the underworld sent Shirogane-chan over to bore my ghost to death. Am I right?"  
  
"Not really." Shirogane doesn't look up from her dog-eared manga volume. A desktop fan putters beside her, gently lifting any stray wisp of hair that cannot claim membership of one of the long, wavy locks that cascade down her back. "This isn't heaven or hell. It's just an average place, much like how I'm just an average person." She moves her thumb by a millimeter, allowing the next page to spring forwards. "If anything, I should be asking if you're secretly the human incarnation of Satan, sentenced to work part-time at a convenience store after leaping through the wrong dimensional portal."  
  
Shirogane sits in an enclave of open books and magazines, their inky pages pinned back by clips and paperweights like large raindrops that have swallowed suspended violets and chamomile blossoms. They flutter like a flock of feeding birds, seagulls by the beachside, their white wings dipped in black. Sunday, Newtype, Jump, Champion. She returns his judgmental gaze with a placid flip of her hair; _What else is there for a plain girl like me to do here?_  
  
"Wow. That was the most halfhearted reference I've ever heard you make." Lucifer leans back on his heels, hands clasping themselves behind his head. The sudden imbalance of his weight makes him take a step back from the product case. "How'd a piece of seaweed like you end up here? I always imagined that you'd die by clipping through a wall and falling into an endless maze of plain hallways. Or that you'd get swallowed by the wallpaper and nobody would notice." His voice is as easy as the way he tips his head back, glancing at Shirogane down the bridge of his nose.  
  
"That's thoughtful of you, Ouma-kun." She closes the volume without saving her place; she must not have been reading it with her eyes. "Hmm...I have to admit that you're right. I've been known to noclip through areas where my average skills aren't enough to carry me through. I'm sure you find that reprehensible, but I don't enjoy games the same way you do." Her hand wanders, looking for a place to store the small paperback, but any spot is good as another in the pile she's amassed on the counter. "I've done a lot of things I regret," she says, gaze distant, stacking it on top of a copy of its sequel. "That's how I got here."  
  
"A cheater _and_ a sinner. Geez, you're horrible!" Ouma feigns distress, but it only lasts for a second before he gets bored of it. His face relaxes back into its default state, a small pink smile that communicates exactly nothing. "Hey, do you know who I can call to complain? I don't think I deserve to be stuck here with someone like you, 'cuz I don't regret a single thing I've done in my life."  
  
The head of the miniature fan turns; the magazines on the right side of the counter undulate in the breeze. "I forgive you."  
  
Ouma's face cinches in the middle with immediate displeasure. "Excuse me?"  
  
"I forgive you," Shirogane repeats, looking at him for the first time since he arrived. Her head tilts, and tilts, and tilts, and her blue hair cascades over her shoulder in soft, shiny waves. She supports her chin with a nimble hand, fingertips shelled with light calluses from thimbles and sandpaper. "You were never a bad person, not even at your worst. You don't have to keep tormenting yourself by pretending that you are."  
  
Ouma sneers. An indignant splotch of red rises to his cheeks, stark against his pale skin. It's not pretty. "You too?" he asks, sharp with irritation. "What, did Momota-chan pop out and give you all a pep talk about his stupid belief shit again? How can you idiots fall for the same trick over and over again even as you drop like flies because of it?" He turns on his heel, pacing from the Lindt to the Ghirardelli, his cumulonimbous scowl trained on the floor. "You don't listen. You never listen. You just believe whatever the hell you want to believe, whether it's true or not. I don't even have to lie to you morons anymore. You're already doing my job for me."  
  
Shirogane's eyes follow him from the snack aisle to the stationery aisle and back. "I don't believe," she says. "I know."  
  
His mouth opens and closes, a springloaded response sitting heavy on his tongue, a half formed thought that would have made sense in the conversation had she not uttered those words. _I know. I know. I know._ One of his hands rests on a bag of candies the size of aspirin tablets, its weight so slight that the plastic packaging remains unbent beneath it. A dark lock of hair sweeps across the profile of his face, crossing it out, his expression unreadable.  
  
She is quiet.  
  
_"You."_  
  
From her perspective, he hasn't moved. The position of his body, the wrinkles in his clothes, the ordering of each thin piece of hair on top of the other, all of these things are still the same as they were a second before. The only difference is that somewhere unseen, his eyes are watching her, filled with contempt the shade of lilacs.  
  
"Was it foolish of me to hope that you wouldn't figure it out so soon?" she asks. When only the plastic fan hums its answer, she peels her back off of the folding chair she sits in, leaning forward to nest her head in her folded arms. "Never mind. Of course it was. You were always too smart for your own good."  
  
Ouma lets his hand slide off of the clear packaging, his pinky finger catching on a loop of grosgrain ribbon for a tenth of a second. His lips barely move when he speaks. "Shirogane-chan, you're the worst. That's not a lie." He pauses; it fills the air with a ringing silence. "I don't know how, but you managed to reveal yourself to me at a time and a place where I can't kill you."  
  
"You'd kill me?" There's nothing to signify that he hears her save for the flexing of a tendon in his left hand, which has curled into a tight fist. Shirogane observes him over the tops of her sleeves, her glasses drifting down the slope of her nose. "Even if you could, it would be pointless. The killing game is over. We both lost, and there's nothing more we can do. The world will go on without us, like it always has, and it will forget about us, just like how it forgets about an anime that aired twenty years ago." The steady descent of her glasses seems to bother her; she takes them off, setting them on the edge of the counter. "I've already been punished by many others. If you were to deal another blow, you'd be beating a dead horse."  
  
His burning gaze sweeps back to his feet. His jaw is shut, every muscle moving through the molasses of ten thousand emotions too fleeting to feel one by one.  
  
"Though if you want to do something to me just to feel closure, I don't mind."  
  
As if someone is tugging on a string attached to the back of his skull, he looks up, fixing her with the tidy stare of someone who is trying to box his thoughts up into words, into a sentence. Sitting there, Shirogane is so resigned, so apathetic, looking up at him with half of her face in her arms like a schoolkid about to doze off in the back of a classroom. The words crawl down his tongue and he spits them out like venom. "I hate you."  
  
"I love you."  
  
Ouma's eyes flash. His face is flooded with red; he looks like he's been shot. There are no boxes sturdy enough to fit his thoughts into.  
  
"You've already hurt me as much as you can, Ouma-kun. Hearing those words from you is punishment enough." Shirogane has the nerve to smile, although, languishing, she takes her chin in her hands again, her head too heavy for her neck to support its weight. "I don't suppose I can say sorry to you right now, can I? I feel as though you'd take my apology and slap me in the face with it. Well, it's nothing I don't deserve."  
  
She expects an answer from him, but he doesn't give her one.  
  
"I regret everything, you know?" Her voice grates around the edges, her blue eyes bright with feeling. "I regret not being able to give you a happy ending. I regret not putting you into a happy story." Her words become tighter and tighter, squeezing themselves through her narrowing throat. "I don't want to write sad stories anymore! Even though it's the only thing a sad person like me can write, I'd rather quit writing altogether! Oh, I felt so _miserable_ watching you in there...!"  
  
She wrings her hands. He remains catatonically silent, still and blank as a white gessoed canvas.  
  
"Tell me...tell me the truth, just once. Why did you always insist on being alone? How could you bear being so lonely?" Her eyes are sad and wet around the edges, her lashes stained a deep navy. Without glass lenses in front of them to shroud her face with fog, she seems uncomfortable, unable to hide. "They were all your friends, weren't they? Weren't they?" She pleads for a response. A sideways glance, a shift in his face. Anything. "I...gave you Gonta-kun, and you wouldn't take his hand no matter what. Even when he trusted you despite everything...what did you think you were, a lone hero who was going to save everyone all by yourself?"  
  
"Tch," Ouma says, one syllable that isn't even a word but means enough that Shirogane shuts her mouth and watches him. "I don't know why you're trying to paint me as a second Akamatsu-chan, but you're barking up the wrong tree, like a blind dog who mistook a gust of wind for a squirrel." The tip of his fingernail skims against a display case as he wanders towards the left end of the checkout line. "It looks like you still don't get it. Telling the truth only hurts people. Right now, I bet you're sorry you let your little secret slip, aren't you? If you didn't say anything, I'd be none the wiser, and we'd be talking about Doraemon or guys with black hair and red eyes. This place would be purgatory and not hell." He walks over and places himself next to the cash register as if he were buying a box of chocolates, one arm resting on the elevated counter next to it, looking down at the battles and love confessions and four-panel gags pinned open on the desktop around her. "Don't you think so?"  
  
"Maybe," says Shirogane, her gaze settling on the same magazine spread he has quietly started to read. "But to be plainly honest, I doubt that would last very long. You'd figure me out, I'm sure of it." It's an old publication, dating back to the 1960s. The simple, round, friendly figures of that time leap across the page, waving bulky hands and shouting bubbles of printed characters. "If you had a little more time, you would have found me like you found Harukawa-san. You're the one who caused the most trouble for me, after all." She looks up at him again, the image of his neutral, joyless smile warped like blown glass in her dewy eyes. "...But even though you were troublesome, I was never bored for even one second when you were around."  
  
His smile expands, pulling towards his cheeks. "Wow, that's exactly what I've wanted to hear all my life! How convenient!" His smile is a crescent moon, cutting deep into his skin, bone white and unforgiving. "But of course, you already knew that. Aw man...using my deepest desires against me is such a dirty trick, you slimy bitch. It's so dirty that I can't help but admire it!" Ouma raises both hands in a sudden motion, clapping loudly and mockingly as close to her ear as he can. "Bravo! As a fellow evildoer, I admire your dedication to being the lowest of the low!"  
  
Shirogane tolerates the noise for a moment, if only because of the pale fright that has taken over her. "I don't," she says, pitchy with distress. "I didn't know."  
  
"Lying, too? You and I are going to get along just fine! I should recruit you as a henchman sometime!" He only increases his pace, shattering the manmade idyll of the empty shop with each harsh clap.  
  
"I'm not lying!" Shirogane stands up, her skirt plummeting into place over her legs. Her eyes are swimming with saltwater tension. "None of that was a lie!"  
  
Ouma stops. The desk fan reigns again. The ends of Shirogane's long hair flutter in the striped light coming in through the blinds behind her; the sun has since moved where it may cast its rays through the west window. "...I don't like this anymore."  
  
Ouma cranes his neck at her, gauging the distance, like he's forgotten how tall she is. She makes no opposing move, only staring at him through that rueful ocean film.  
  
"If you're really not lying, then you're a pitiful person." He cups her face with his hands, which are warmer than their clammy hue would suggest. The distance shrinks, an arm's length to a forearm's length. "Pitiful. Totally pathetic." Twenty centimeters, ten, six, five, four, three and a half, quickly at first, then as unhurried as continental drift.  
  
Two and a half, two, one and a half, one.  
  
Zero, saltwater cool on his skin from the diligent fan turning its head once more towards their joined faces. She breathes too soon and her mouth crumples against his, her palm firm against his chest as she shoves him away.  
  
"Don't cry, Shirogane-chan." Her arm shields the middle third of her face. "Stop crying. It's ugly when your chin gets all wrinkled." Her spine bends, slowly bends, and she takes in a sharp breath of air only because she has to. "I said don't cry. It's annoying. Stop it."  
  
Ouma wipes the wet trails off of his cheek with a sleeve folded over his knuckles. They repaint themselves within a second, forging downwards even as he stubbornly blots them away again.  
  
"Don't cry," he repeats, softly, although it doesn't sound like it's meant for her to hear.


End file.
